Sometimes you read a critique of a film that makes you wonder if the person who wrote that critique has actually seen the film in question. Such is the case with a recent USA Today column by Eric Metaxas on the Jackie Robinson movie 42, which opened this past weekend.

In his column, Metaxas writes that the film “simply avoids” and “doesn’t tell us” about “the devout Christian faith” that motivated Robinson and Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey when they agreed that Robinson should turn the other cheek in response to racial slurs and the like. But Metaxas is simply wrong about that.

MAGIC is everywhere you look these days. From bookstores to movie theatres, stories about wizards, witches and mythological beasts are all the rage; and for a person like me, who grew up with hobbits, aliens, flying horses and Jedi Knights, the current fantasy craze — and the various Christian responses to it — bring back a lot of memories.

How popular is fantasy right now? The most successful movie of the year (so far) is Shrek, a cheeky parody of the fairy tale genre that turns conventional wisdom about ogres, dragons and beautiful princesses on its head. That film’s box office performance could be surpassed in a few weeks by Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first film based on J.K. Rowling’s phenomenally popular novels about a young orphan and his classmates at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.